Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular term. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the MyBU Student Portal for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• CAS EC 701: Microeconomic Theory 1
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor. - Neoclassical general equilibrium theory. Topics covered include consumption, production, existence of competitive equilibrium, fundamental welfare theorems, externalities, and uncertainty.
• CAS EC 702: Macroeconomic Theory 1
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor. - Introduction to topics and tools in macroeconomics. Dynamic programming and rational expectations; neoclassical growth and real business cycle models; investment and financial markets; analysis of frictional labor markets.
• CAS EC 703: Microeconomic Theory 2
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor. - Noncooperative game theory. Economics of information: adverse selection, signaling, principal agent problem, moral hazard and introduction to mechanism design.
• CAS EC 704: Macroeconomic Theory 2
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor. - Effects of taxation and government spending; monetary non-neutrality and nominal rigidities; optimal fiscal and monetary policy.
• CAS EC 705: Introduction to Mathematical and Computational Economics
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor. - The first half of the course covers introductory real analysis, including metric spaces, correspondences, fixed point theorems, and convex analysis. The second half covers basic skills for programming and computation for economists, including basic programming, software engineering, and numerical methods.
• CAS EC 707: Advanced Statistics for Economists
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor. - Intermediate level probability and statistics course intended as preparation for econometrics and economic theory. Topics typically covered include random variables, moments, sampling, point and interval estimation, hypothesis testing, and asymptotic theory in the context of univariate and multivariate models.
• CAS EC 708: Advanced Econometrics 1
  Graduate Prerequisites: (GRSEC705 & GRSEC707) or consent of instructor. - Advanced treatment of econometric theory: projections, OLS, asymptotic theory, instrumental variables, GLS, heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation robust standard errors, multivariate systems, non-linear models, maximum likelihood, misspecified models, hypothesis testing, introduction to time series, unit root and cointegration, simultaneous equations, GMM.
• CAS EC 709: Advanced Econometrics 2
  Graduate Prerequisites: (GRSEC708) or consent of instructor - Advanced course in econometrics with an emphasis on applications to cross-section, panel and time series data. Typically covers generalized method of moment and/or likelihood-based estimation in the context of limited dependent variable models, linear panel models, rational expectation models, structural vector autoregressions, and treatment effects.
• CAS EC 711: Advanced Topics in Econometrics
  Graduate Prerequisites: (GRSEC708) or consent of instructor. - Advanced course in econometrics with an emphasis on recent topics of research in microeconometrics. Examples of topics covered include nonparametric estimation, bootstrap, partial and weak identification, nonseparable models, quantile and distributional methods, nonlinear panel data models, and structural estimation.
• CAS EC 712: Time Series Econometrics
  Graduate Prerequisites: (GRSEC708) or consent of instructor. - Theory of stationary processes: models, estimation in the time and frequency domain, spectral analysis, asymptotic distribution, Kalman filter, VAR models. Non-stationary processes: functional central limit theorem, asymptotic results with unit roots, tests for unit roots, cointegrated systems, structural change models.
• CAS EC 716: Game Theory
  Graduate Prerequisites: (GRSEC705) or a course in real analysis; or consent of instructor. - Noncooperative game theory with applications.
• CAS EC 717: Advanced Topics in Microeconomic Theory 1
  Graduate Prerequisites: (GRSEC701) or consent of instructor. - Topics in microeconomic theory to be selected by course instructors. The first half of the course (Christophe Chamley) presents the recent literature on social learning, fads, herds, with applications. The second half presents recent literature on network theory, including network formation, diffusion, learning, and network games.
• CAS EC 718: Advanced Topics in Microeconomic Theory 2
  Graduate Prerequisites: (GRSEC701) or consent of instructor. - Topics in microeconomic theory to be selected by course instructors. Areas include theory and applications of models of abstract choice, choice under uncertainty (risk, subjective uncertainty, ambiguity), choice over time, choice over menus. Critical analysis of key papers in the literature.
• CAS EC 721: Topics in Development Economics 1
  Graduate Prerequisites: (GRSEC701 & GRSEC702) or consent of instructor. - Analytical approaches to development economics, using applications of contract theory, information economics, voting theory, and dynamic methods. Topics include credit, households, firms, networks, occupational choice and human capital investment, inequality and institutional dynamics, property rights, political competition, corruption and clientelism.
• CAS EC 722: Topics in Economic Development 2
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor. - Empirical analysis of the economic development process, addressing both proximate causes (capital, labor, human capital investments, credit and insurance market failures, and trade flows) and fundamental causes (institutional factors, conflict, and state capacity), integrated with training in empirical methods.
• CAS EC 731: Market Organization and Public Policy
  Graduate Prerequisites: (GRSEC703) or consent of instructor. - Analytical foundations of public policy toward market organization. Theoretical emphasis on imperfect competition, the structure of markets, and the strategic behavior of firms and consumers. Implications for policy in developed and less-developed countries.
• CAS EC 732: Topics in Industrial Organization
  Graduate Prerequisites: consent of instructor. - Advanced topics in research in industrial organization, often emphasizing empirical applications, such as estimation of demand and estimation of strategic interactions between firms.
• CAS EC 733: Empirical Industrial Organization
  Graduate Prerequisites: (GRSEC703) or consent of instructor. - This course studies the frontiers of research in industrial organization, and emphasizes connections between theoretical and empirical topics. Typical topics are advanced demand estimation, auctions and market design. Can be taken separately or in addition to GRS EC 731 and EC 732.
• CAS EC 741: Topics in Macroeconomics and Monetary Theory
  Graduate Prerequisites: (GRSEC701 & GRSEC702) or consent of instructor. - Advanced topics in macroeconomics and empirical macroeconomics. Topics include empirical and theoretical perspectives on the role of monetary policy in the economy, labor markets, firm dynamics, links between financial markets and macroeconomic outcomes, and causes and consequences of inequality among households.
• CAS EC 742: Applied Macroeconomics
  Graduate Prerequisites: (GRSEC701 & GRSEC702) or consent of instructor. - Advanced topics in macroeconomics and empirical macroeconomics, with an emphasis on empirical analysis, model construction, and the quantitative evaluation of business cycles and growth.